#proxy agents

🌻Sunflower: Who or what is your OC loyal to? Is loyalty something they give often or is it hard to earn?

🌸Cherry Blossom: How does your character feel about death? Have they experienced a lot of loss in their life?

🌹Rose: What or who does your character admire? What do they admire about that person or thing?

I'm going to make these all about Ayu because I can.

🌻A big component of Ayu's character is ruthless optimism towards never giving up on the people she cares about. If you're her friend, this girl will bend over backwards to make you happy. If you betray her, watch out, because she will cry and her crying summons her angry boyfriend and crew who are mad you made her cry. Jokes aside, the one person Ayu cares about most (and I use that word tentatively) is Juuzou, since he's her childhood friend turned boyfriend. Ayu is loyal towards all of her friends, but Juuzou will always be the person she turns to first.

🌸Ayu's relationship with the concept of death is really weird in False Promises since as an Agent of Ifel, she physically cannot die. Ifel is the god of life and positivity and its powers sustain and heal her through fatal injuries. She's also fighting the god of death and negativity, Thade, as Lively Eden. Ayu will lose people she cares about later in the series, but not in the "death" sense.

Thank you for the ask!

11. Do you have an oc "type?" (AKA, are there any design or characterization trends that you notice popping up amongst your characters?)

A not insignificant portion of my OCs are inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! characters, directly or indirectly. Ayu shares her surname with Yuzu from Arc-V and is inspired by Yugi Muto from Duel Monsters and Yuma Tsukumo from Zexal. Juuzou is inspired by Ryoga "Shark" Kamishiro from Zexal. Sayuri is inspired by Ruka from 5Ds and Rio Kamishiro from Zexal. Shuu shares his surname with Aki from 5Ds and is inspired by Vector/Shingetsu Rei from Zexal and Yuri from Arc-V. What can I say, Yu-Gi-Oh! was my childhood!

12. Do you ship any of your ocs together? If so, introduce one of the pairings!

Ayu and Juuzou's relationship is 100% the backbone of False Promises and if they don't work convincingly, the entire story falls apart. I've talked about them in my blog, especially during @orangelizardtattoo's romance week writing talks a while back but to summarize, Ayu and Juuzou cover for each other's weaknesses while supporting their strengths. They both have to undergo character development before romance even comes into the picture and it takes the arrival of a certain character (Yuuto) for them to even realize they're in love.

Juuzou has been raised to believe that love is transactional and that he has to be somehow worthy of love. At the beginning of the story, he's in a place where he does not think he will ever be worthy no matter what he does. Then Ayu comes along and shows him absolute, unwavering unconditional love despite the fact that he can't love himself. Juuzou is able to develop thanks to having someone in his life who will stay with him despite his flaws. This quote (paraphrased) by Kyoko Honda from Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket sums him up pretty handily: "If the world doesn't want us, then we will live for the people who do." For Juuzou, that person is Ayu.

And while that unconditional love may have saved Juuzou, it's actually one of Ayu's pitfalls. Because she's selfless to the point of self-sacrifice and will help others at cost to herself. Ayu bestows unconditional love onto everyone, but no person can be everywhere all at once. It takes an intervention from Juuzou to help Ayu see that she needs to put herself first and take care of herself before she takes care of others. Ayu also sees the best in everyone, which is another trait that pulled Juuzou from the brink. But this also makes her naive and overly trusting; she doesn't believe someone would do something bad to her or her friends. Because why would they? They're her friend; they're a good person.

Thanks for the asks!

9) What scene was the hardest for you to write and why?

THE PROLOGUE. THE GODDAMN PROLOGUE.

False Promises isn't actually a story about magical girl shenanigans. Most magical girl stories are about a group of girls fighting against an evil group, usually following a monster-of-the-week format. Precure fights against an evil organization that creates evil monsters (the ones from Star Detective Precure are called Hanninda). The girls of Madoka Magica must defeat Witches. Ladybug and Chat Noir must fight against akumatized villains.

False Promises DOES NOT HAVE ANY OF THAT. Instead, it's closer to the Believix season of Winx Club that's the girls vs. the Wizards of the Black Circle. HOWEVER, the main focus of the story is Ayu and Juuzou's developing relationship. Their magical identities and all that entails are obstacles to that.

Because the story is introduced from that angle, the Prologue has to do all of the world-building heavy-lifting on the magical side of things (which is still really important to the story). It has to do 5 primary things:

Introduce the gods: Ifel, god of life and positivity and Thade, god of death and negativity

Explain why Ifel and Thade (gods) created the Agents

Explain why the Agents can't ignore their constant calls to action or disobey the gods

Position the Agents as reluctant child soldiers/explain that they do not want to be fighting but have no choice and would rather be doing ANYTHING ELSE

Explain that the Agents - and therefore the reader - don't know exactly know WHY they have to fight.

The Prologue is - in my opinion - the most important "chapter" in False Promises. If I don't pull off the Prologue, the rest of the story is confusing. I have to give a HUGE shout-out to my beta readers here for emphasizing this, and I've since re-written the Prologue to address all of these concerns.

15) What physical quirks do your characters tend to have? Eyebrow raising, picking nails, biting lips, pacing crossing arms, etc.

Great question!

Ayu wears a bracelet that's a bit too long for her wrist, so there's an excess chain that falls down. She has a habit of playing with it when she's nervous or anxious: twirling it around her pinky, yanking it, etc. It's honestly a miracle it hasn't broken on her yet (lol). This is more a stim than it is a self-soothing measure. It's a habit Ayu picked up after receiving the bracelet (it was a gift).

Thanks for the ask!

Since Proxy Agents is an urban fantasy, the main setting is a real world location: Yokohama, Japan. All of the locales within Yokohama are fictional (with the exception of Minato Mirai 21), which is pretty common in anime/manga (e.g. Takoba Municipal Beach Park from My Hero Academia, Ouran Elite Private Academy from Ouran High School Host Club).

The fantastical elements are actively kept hidden from the world at large. This would be the Trollhunters; Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo (for anyone who remembers that book series); and Ultra Maniac (at least the first volume) approach, wherein the magical elements are kept a closely-guarded secret by the protagonist and a select group of bosom friends but still drives the plot and influences the characters in a major way. So that's the world; now for the magic.

I typically keep the rules of my magic systems pretty loose since if I get too rigid, I find it limits my writing. So Ifel's and Thade's powers are pretty loosey-goosey, but they do have some "themes" that also apply to their Agents.

Ifel and its Agents are essentially infinite power generators. They chuck out their attacks willy-nilly. They can use their powers while de-transformed, but it is very limited. The Agents’ powers from Ifel make them functionally immortal in battle, allowing them to rapidly heal from lethal attacks. When they transform back into their civilian identities, any damage they took is instantly healed. However, they do have limits—mainly in regards to their natural human limits. The Agents of Ifel operate off of Dragon Ball-like power scaling. To grow stronger, Ifel will power them up by forcing their bodies to accept greater quantities of its power. So rather than through rigorous training, the Agents of Ifel must achieve the next “transformation,” so to speak.

Thade and its Agents are power converters. They take outside emotions or phenomena and convert it into their own power to use. Death Frost, for example, will take the humidity in the air and turn it into ice to manipulate as he sees fit. The Agents’ powers from Thade make them functionally immortal in battle. Thade does not “heal” its Agents conventionally; rather, it destroys the damage they take to restore them. When they transform back into their civilian identities, any damage they took is instantly healed. In a way, this makes the Agents of Thade functionally similar to zombies. However, they do have limits—mainly in regards to their natural human limits. The Agents of Thade operate off of My Hero Academia-like power scaling. Hence, through training, solidarity, effort, struggle, and rising above failure, they get stronger.

The Agents all have elemental powers and the Agents of Ifel have titles relating to natural environments.

Lively Eden is the Agent of Sky and has wind powers

Lively Arctic is the Agent of Tundras and has ice powers

Lively Pacifica is the Agent of Oceans and has water powers

Death Frost has ice powers

Death Storm has lightning/electricity powers

@nagisakwrites didn't specify anyone, so I'm stealing their lines to do another one of these.

A line about the sky.

An orange-red sherbet glow melted across the sky.

A line about the movement of hair.

Aglow in the stammering streetlights, her long, curly, dark pink hair—held in a thick, high ponytail—trailed behind her, dancing to the beat of this moonless night’s melody.

A line about a friend.

Surely there was some sort of purposeful intent behind the way he wrote his calligraphy.

Confusion.

Her mind was racing, but she couldn’t differentiate between any of her thoughts.

These were quite easy to find, since all of them touch on different elements of False Promises. Lively Eden is the Agent of Sky with long, flowing magenta hair. The book is about Ayu and Juuzou's developing friendship. Confusion happens. Thanks for the lines! I had a lot of fun!

For anyone else meandering around who wants another one of these, here are your lines!

A line about an important item to your character(s).

A line about art.

Shenaniganry.